Bike polo and beyond

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Monthly Archives: April 2013

This sunday! Roads closed to cars! Ride your bike, walk your doggie, scoot around! Hang out, cruise the streets, have a bite, see some friends…ride your bike to the sea! It’s a whole new route this round; the latest CicLAvia route will cross the city via Venice Boulevard, straight from downtown to the Pacific.

Last year we turned a parking lot in Little Tokyo into a temporary bike polo paradise.

There are so many things right with this scene.

We loaded up a car and a van and brought out extra bikes and mallets, set up boards and nets with the help of Pomona Bike Polo (miss you guys!), and had all manner of folks playing polo with us–a couple firefighters from LAFD even joined in for a few games!

This weekend most our your local polo club (LABP) will be competing in San Fresnoville (we decided Fresno needed a nicer name) at the Southwest Regional Qualifier. Good luck L.A. Bike Polo!

Since we won’t be able to bring you that experience this time around, we’ll be going guerilla instead. We’ll will be riding the route scoping out an empty lot begging for some bike polo action, with our quiver of mallets and a set of cones to take it back to the old school before nets were the standard. Polo in the streets! Free fun for everyone! If you see any of us riding around with wheelcovers on bikes and mallets sticking out of our bags, say hello! If you see us posted up getting into the polo groove, feel in to stick around for a game or a lesson.

My latest piece for Urban Velo focuses LA Metro’s “Share the Road” campaign and looks at a nationwide shift in bicycle advocacy campaigns and support from fighting for basic infrastructure to a focus on road sharing by cyclists and drivers and highlighting a shared responsibility everyone on the streets has to keep one another safe.

Entities like LA Metro and AAA are coming on board to advocate for cyclists rights, and even legislators in Washington have begun to acknowledge cycling as a legitimate mode of transportation rather than a recreational activity exclusive to MAMILS (Middle-aged men in lycra–thanks Ryan Snyder for that gem).